| This article is going to discuss the relative merits of the Left Hand and the Underhand for an honour deck. There is no "absolute" answer - as with many things to do with card choices, your local environment and opponents are going to be important in determining the best deck to play. But hopefully the ideas here will be helpful.
Unsurprisingly, this is all with reference to Phoenix decks. Some of the below points will hold true to decks of other clans, but others won't.
Let's start with a quick refresher - what does each Wind do?
The Left Hand lets you discard the favour to send an attacking or allying unit home - even if you're not present in the battle. Its second ability is to bow a Courtier or your Stronghold when a Samurai dies in the resolution of a battle or duel to gain 2 honour.
The Underhand lets you discard the favour to search your deck for a Political action card, once per card title per game. Its second ability is to once/turn bow a Courtier to stop a Samurai with less PH from assigning to attack.
The environment is definitely skewed in favour of military decks. That is, in any tournament, you're likely to play against more military decks than anything else put together. Therefore, the first consideration for an honour deck should be the ability to defend - and both these Winds offer something for defense. The Left Hand is unconditional send-home, no questions asked. It costs you the favour, but you expect to have the favour against military opponents. You can use it without presence, meaning that you can hit mobile or cavalry decks just as easily as plodders. Its big weaknesses are to the Right Hand, which lets a military player negate your send-home, or Strategic Crossroads, which lets the unbowed unit return to the battle if there's another unit still there. With the forthcoming errata on Strategic Crossroads, and cards like Fall On Your Knees and Outmaneuvered by Force to stop the Right Hand's Reaction, the Left Hand can provide effective defence.
However, so can the Underhand. Against a deck containing Samurai, you can prevent your opponent even assigning to battle. However, this isn't as easy as with the Left Hand - your opponent needs a Samurai, and you need a Courtier in play with more personal honour than the samurai. It's a good ability, and not vulnerable to the Right Hand, but still not as strong as the Left Hand.
That said, the Underhand's other ability can also be used for defence. There are several Political cards that can help you defend - Return for Training, Battlefield of Shallow Graves, and Outmaneuvered in Court to name a few examples. Similarly, other Political actions allow you to kill your opponent's personalities (Storm Heart, for instance) - and if you kill them, you don't need to send them home! Cunning use of the Favour to draw actions into your hand can give an Underhand a more solid defense than a Left Hand deck, focusing both abilities on defending your provinces.
The Left Hand's secondary ability - gaining honour - isn't that great against military. While it will occasionally make a difference, you have to sacrifice a samurai and bow your SH/a courtier to gain 2 honour, which won't always make a difference to the game, and is expensive. While sometimes it is worthwhile, I personally found I was using the ability very rarely.
So against military, neither Wind has a clear advantage. The Underhand has more potential power against most of the field, but most of its tricks require having Courtiers out, so it's going to be slightly less reliable than a Left Hand deck a lot of the time. That said, against someone running the Right Hand, the Left Hand may be useless if you don't draw the right cards.
What about Control? Against a Control player, the Left Hand's ability to send someone home is not amazingly useful. The problem here is that a Control deck is designed to grind your deck to a halt, giving it as much time as it likes to finish you off. The Left Hand doesn't let you fight back - it only lets you survive longer once your honour is stalemated and your opponent is attacking you. Which really isn't that good, unless you somehow manage to break the lock. The secondary ability is a real joke against Scorpion - while you might use it on the odd Storm Heart or Now Face Me, the chances are you won't have a Courtier alive to bow for it (and you don't want to leave your box unbowed in their turn). Similarly, they probably won't be attacking you until it's too late.
The Underhand does give you some ability to fight back. With cards like Shame and Dirty Politics, Dismissed, and maybe Outmanevered by Force (also Political) you can use the Favour to get hold of the cards you need to fight back. By delaying your opponent's ability to lock you down, you give yourself a better chance of winning the game. The secondary ability of the Underhand, like that of the Left Hand, is also basically useless. But the main ability is important to this matchup.
So against Control, the Underhand has a clear advantage - allowing you to fight back against your opponent's strategy.
Against other honour, Wind choice is a little difficult. As a Phoenix player, you can hope to get control of the favour early against Crane, thanks to your personalities' high personal honour and low costs. Against Lion, the opposite is often true - since they get even more honour for their costs. However, the Underhand is still the better bet. One use of Rhetoric can decide the game between two honour decks, and that's not the only card the Underhand lets you fetch. While gaining 2 honour off your opponent's Kenshinzen duel might help offset their gain of 5 (or more), it's going to be less useful than that extra Rhetoric, Storm Heart or similar. You only need the favour once over the course of the game to make as much difference as the Left Hand can make over the course of a full game.
So, I strongly recommend the Underhand for Phoenix honour decks. 3x Isawa Toshiji and 3x Otomo Taneji give you a fair few Courtiers - if you need more, Shosuro Maru and Doji Nagori are also available (and Honoured Sensei can even help you pay for them while giving you honour). Naturally, Court Chambers is a very useful holding to have on your side, far more useful than Tsudao's Chambers.
There are a few matchups where you might wish you had the Left Hand - Rats with Daigotsu spring to mind - but the Underhand is the more flexible and powerful Wind, giving you the resources you need to beat whatever your opponent is playing. A "toolbox" of Political actions is the best way to run it, I think, with 3 copies of the strongest ones and a single copy of cards that are only situationally useful (like Dirty Politics and Shame).
Feel free to argue or discuss this on the forums here!
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